


mirror mirror how tf do you say goodbye?

by impossible_rat_babies



Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén, Fallen Hero: Rebirth (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Other, POV Third Person, Snippets, oh hey just some sad stuff like hello
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-18 13:03:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21661267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossible_rat_babies/pseuds/impossible_rat_babies
Summary: don't take fists to a knife fight and don't go to your best friends house to get fixed up
Relationships: Ortega/Sidestep (Fallen Hero), nb!Sidestep/Ortega
Kudos: 17





	mirror mirror how tf do you say goodbye?

Pollux hates mirrors on principle. 

He’s never liked staring at his own face; not because he’s ugly to look at, they made sure he wasn’t. He’s far from the picture perfect they made him nowadays, but there’s a history in his sunken cheeks and how his nose juts too far out from his face, the curve of it getting worse each time it gets broken. Three parallel lines across his temple and through his ear, a nick in his upper lip.

He hates mirrors for entirely different reasons, for the truths they don’t hide, that they reflect back in gritty detail. They don’t hide his flaws, the bags under his eyes, the limpness of hunched shoulders, the lack of warmth in his chapped lips he chews far too much. How he looks when he strips away each layer, staring hard at his face, whispering and willing his eyes to not make him look so utterly empty.

Pollux doesn’t like when people look at him—really look at him enough to remember, to see how he is so empty. To pick out the details and to know how he moves, how he exists as a marionette with cut strings, keeping the illusion he can move on his own. He keeps his masks well, pretends like his strings aren’t cut, but the masks and strings don’t work when people can see them.

People like Ortega and his static brain like a TV left on the wrong station, a low level nagging at the base of his skull, like reading a book when there are no letters on the page.

Pollux looks away, coming back to the cool tile under his toes, and an oversized shirt and pants that smell like musky cologne. Ortega is always kind in offering him his clothes, but all of his clothing is comically big on him, the sleeves long enough to hang down to knees, the pants a good six inches too long too. At least the shirt covers his arms and the collar is tight enough; he can deal with swimming in fabric.

Ortega insisted he not go back to wearing the clothes he dragged himself in with–not with how the smell of garbage was practically palatable–and Pollux wanted nothing more than a shower at the time. Compromise on the smallest things. Plus it wouldn’t be a crime if he smelled like his laundry soap for the next week.

“Fuck, Ricardo!”

Pollux curses and lifts his arm enough to see the bottle of alcohol in Ortega’s hand along with the bloodied gauze and the look of frustration he’s giving him. It would be less funny if he didn’t have to kneel down beside him to reach the nasty cut still oozing blood.

“It’s not that bad, Pollux.” Ortega chides and he goes back to dabbing along the wound and Pollux winces, chewing his lip. It wouldn’t ordinarily hurt this bad, but it isn’t his own hands and Pollux has the right to be whiny for once in his shitty life.

It’s a necessity to show this much skin, shirt half rolled up and held tight, even if his stomach is flipping over on itself; one look, one wrong adjustment of his hand holding up the shirt and even with bumps and twisting paths of scars painted all down his side, there’s still a chance and he isn’t going to follow that train of thought. He only enlisted Ortega’s help because he couldn’t quite get twisted around to sew it up himself.

“It fucking hurts that’s what.” Pollux grumbles and Ortega’s breath is short, dumping the gauze in the sink with the bloodied cotton balls.

“Who did you go and have to pick a knife fight with?” He asks and Pollux rolls his eyes, fingers clenching on the rim of the sink.

“Someone in an alleyway without any sense.” Pollux breathes out as the gentle numbing starts to take over and Ortega sets the numbing cream aside.

“Wait,” Ortega looks up at him a little dumbstruck, “you got into an honest to god knife fight?”

Pollux blinks and he scoffs incredulously. “No it’s a fun new euphemism I came up with today—get yourself into a knife fight!” Ortega is glaring at his joke and Pollux’s face is going to hurt with the amount of eye-rolling he’s doing.

“Yes I got into an honest knife fight and didn’t have a knife. Guy came after me because I didn’t have any cash on me and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Satisfied?”

Ortega tsks, a small “mierda” accompanying it and Pollux bites his tongue before he sighs, drumming fingers against the counter.

“I was coming here if that soothes your concerns.” Another compromise, tempering his frustrations.

“I could have come and gotten you. Saved you the trouble” Ortega huffs and Pollux rolls his eyes.

“No thanks.” Pollux shuts down that avenue without another word and Ortega is giving him a Look again. Pollux stares right back at him until Ortega gives up, eyes falling back to his hands as they thread the curved needle. Pollux chews his lip again and he silently breathes out.

“I’m fine, Ricardo.” Pollux speaks, trying for warm and quiet, but it always comes out like he’s trying too hard. “Seriously, it’s not that bad. Been through worse scrapes than this.”

Ortega doesn’t say anything and Pollux doesn’t press, doesn’t poke and prod to argument neither of them have the energy for. Ortega will forgive him before too long, content that he came by. Content that he asked for help for once.

Pollux picks at the caulking along the sink, listening to Ortega suturing the wound, the click of the needle and tweezers, a dull pulling sensation. The others only needing gauze or butterfly closures—simple things, ones he took care of when he got out of the shower. It was hard to stare at his own skin, to dissociate from what was staring back, but he needed clean wounds before comfort. Ortega finally ties the last knot, and it only takes a few more minutes to cover it up with gauze and medical tape to hold it in place. 

But he doesn’t pull away right away, no. His hand slides down across the peaks and valleys of the vicious scar down his side, brow furrowing like he’s trying to remember if he’s seen it before. He’s touched it in the dark before, traced its grotesque path from shoulder to hip.

It isn’t one he’ll remember, but Pollux lets him think, lets him touch. Lets him keep his head to himself; he doesn’t want to explain how he got it, the fall that lead to that night and the week after, nursing chemical burns and he knows the smell of burnt flesh too well. 

He’s got that look on his face, the one Pollux has seen far too much. The wrinkle in his brow, the curl of his lip; landmarks of pain–of blame.

“Ricardo?”

Pollux’s voice is quiet, a gentle call to bring him back around. Keep him from digging into all the what if what if what if. 

Ortega blinks and he half smiles, keeping his questions to himself–keeping the pain to himself. Pollux pushes aside the thought of how familiar that is, pulling down his shirt when Ortega stands.

Pollux stands there silent until Ortega has washed his hands, everything either thrown away or cleaned. Like how bandaging wounds isn’t something for the bathroom in Ortega’s apartment, but old habits die hard. Well, not all of them died when he hit the asphalt.

“Hey..” Pollux speaks as the lid of the first aid kit snaps closed.

“Hey…” Ortega repeats and Pollux clumsily steps closer, wrapping his arms around Ortega’s waist, pressing the side of his face to his chest.

“I’m sorry…” He apologizes, resting his chin against his chest to look up at him. Ortega’s brow cocks but he’s quiet, his hands settling against Pollux’s waist. “I don’t say that enough. Also thank you. I don’t say that enough either; need to start saying them more, just so you know. I’m….bad at saying what I should.”

Ortega sighs out his nose and takes Pollux’s face in his hands, thumb brushing across his cheekbones and across the trio of scars cutting from eyebrow to ear.

“You’re welcome, Lux.” He presses a kiss to his forehead for a long moment, gentle, kind, warm. Softer than he deserves. Pollux grips the back of his shirt, just letting the warmth of Ortega seep into him; he’ll be smelling like his soap and cologne for the next week. Might as well soak in as much as he can for now before it fades to cigarettes and lost dreams.

“I could get used to this sort of hug.” Ortega mumbles into his hair and Pollux snorts, fingers twisting his shirt into knots.

“Yeah yeah…” He grumbles, but he doesn’t say no. There have been more of those, more concessions and confessions; vulnerability painted in fluorescent lights or in Ortega’s pitch black bedroom.

“Are you staying the night?” Ortega asks and he doesn’t hide the hope in his voice. Pollux sighs and pushes away the dozens of reasons why he shouldn’t—why he can’t. He doesn’t have the strength to spin around a good reason why he should stay, too tired to convince himself he doesn’t want to be close, too tired to contain his hope that maybe one day things like this won’t be exceptions to his rules.

“Yes, I’ll stay the night.”

The wall opposite the bed is colored in dim orange, filtering in through blinds only half drawn to block out how even late into the night, Los Diablos still shines. Ortega’s mumbling into his stomach, face buried there, arm curled around Pollux’s legs and his fingers trace mindless patterns across the bare strip of skin at the small of his back. Pollux replies quietly to the simple conversation and it’s as mindless as it is comforting. It’s easy to play with his hair when he’s this close and this tired, twisting strand after strand into loose curls, leaving his head covered in them. He ruffles it all back to a mess and starts over, running his nails across Ortega’s scalp. Ortega hums quietly and a few more sweet nothings come out of his mouth and Pollux’s face flushes. 

Back in the days something like this would never have happened. Not in this way, not with how he wants to kiss the top of Ortega’s head and mumble sweet little things right on back to him—enough to scare him with how much he needs to say them, to tell Ortega all of it. Counting all the little things he needs to say before everything is ruined. How much he missed him and how scary that is, how much space he already has inside of his heart when he buried all of that away. Can’t make him hate when despair is easier. How terrifying it is that he’s breathing life back into him, back into the places committed to death.

It’ll be easier when he says those things, easier to let him go once and for all when he has nothing left to say, no kindling left for the fire. Nothing but goodbye.

But he keeps finding new things to say, new tiny little things he needs to tell Ortega; terribly sweet things he could never have imagined saying before. It’s all finding and forging new paths, finding a way to be like how it is now then how it was before. That was nine months ago his list is next to endless and they’ve had to reshape old pieces to fit into a new picture and craft new ones as well. Find new ways to paint a picture of what they are…if “they” are such a thing.

Ortega’s breathing has turned slow and steady, his chest gently rising and falling in the hazy orange glow from the street lights below. Pollux paints another set of curls across his head before his eyes get too heavy to keep open. He curls in just so, enough to kiss the top of Ortega’s head, whispering soft words into his hair, ones he can’t say where he can hear–where he can’t know. Because if he knows–knows how much those words really mean and to see his face when he does–Pollux doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to say goodbye.


End file.
